RE: Charlie Kirk's Death, Conspiracies, and Social Degradation
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I only occasionally saw some clips of Charlie's debates before seeing the news of his death. It actually took me a moment to place the name. So I can say I don't know enough about his viewpoints to criticise or criticize defend him. The clips I saw, whether you agreed with his side of the debate or not, he always came across as respectful of the other's point of view, even if he didn't agree with it. So it took me by surprise that he was assassinated to start with (I wasn't aware of his direct political connections to Trump) and even more so the vitriol I started seeing online directed at him.
Someone I know shared a post on that cropped quote on empathy and sympathy a couple of days after his death. They were arguing that he was wrong about empathy, that by cutting the quote it wasn't being misrepresented and he was still horrible for saying he didn't believe in empathy and real empathetic people care more about others. Basically it came across as "we're right, Charlie is wrong" but the timing ironically said to me that the poster wasn't displaying either empathy or sympathy. The person who shared it seems to have deleted it now, so maybe they suddenly saw the same contradiction or someone pointed it out.
I tried to point out to someone I used to think was fairly reasonable that the way many of the more extreme left ideologists are starting to behave towards anyone who might even mildly disagree with them is more likely to push those others towards those with more extreme right views, who will welcome them with open arms. They didn't care and basically called me a problem for trying to keep the peace.
Thankfully there are still sane, balanced voices like yours as lifeboats when I'm starting to feel like there's little hope left for humanity. Someone pointed out that Right and Left are just descriptions of political viewpoints not people or groups of people. Maybe we need to keep that in mind more before we start labelling people.
There are plenty who would disagree with your statement that my position is "sane and balanced." I freely admit to being an extremist on support for individual liberty and opposition to the State.
There has been a distinct escalation in partisan divisiveness since I first became aware of politics as a kid during the Clinton administration. I can't put my finger on the cause, and it's probably a complicated blend of factors including (but not limited to) the tribalism electoral politics incentives, the need for traditional media sensationalism, and social media echo chamber algorithms. There's a deeper factor at play, too.
The underlying nature of politics is violence, theft, and coercion. When people try to wield this to their benefit, is it any wonder conflict arises and division occurs?
My statement of "sane and balanced" perhaps comes from a different viewpoint to many. I often forget how much tribalism plays a huge part in how we react to things and the concept of individual liberties doesn't seem extreme to me, but rather what I grew up thinking to be the norm. Yet ironically my viewpoint probably comes from tribal values. I grew up in an environment where we had a moral code of self responsibility and discipline and an awareness of the consequences of actions both for ourselves and others. So individual liberty and self responsibility came hand in hand. So if you got in trouble with the state then the chances were it was because your actions derserved those consequences. I grew up with very traditional British values including chivalrous behaviour.
The concept in the UK was that they rule by the consent of the governed, although this was changing by the late 90s and was one of the things that prompted us to leave. It's seems to have only further degraded since we left and Australia was already further along the path towards rule by violence.
I don't know if I'm making any sense, but for me balance comes from a base of personal liberty and responsibility and understanding where that begins to encroach on others. If someone's beliefs come from their tribal environment you may not understand them but as long as they don't harm you then you shouldn't impose your own beliefs on them. I'm seeing a lot of extremes (on both ends of the spectrum, but more aggressively from the left end) and with them being the loudest it feels like there aren't many taking the middle ground. So, yes, you come across as balanced, but maybe only because we have more shared beliefs than not. 😆